Two For Flinching: A Love Story
by A. Shieldmaid
Summary: Two For Flinching: A Love Story-An Unexpurgated Interview With Nathan Explosion in 18 Parts Disclaimer: This is Filthy and Wrong. Turn back now, before it's too late. Rated "M" doesn't cover it. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Also, frank smut, kink, drug use, alcohol abuse, rough sex, serious profanity, violent threats... Everything you love about Metalocalypse. 3


**Two For Flinching: A Love Story/** ** _An Unexpurgated Interview With Nathan Explosion in Eighteen Parts_**

 **One.**

Okay.

So Ofdensen says I have to do this stupid shit. Because, something about Contractual Obligation and apparently it's worth a couple million bucks.

But I don't need a couple million dollars.

I think it's all bullshit.

And I hate to talk about myself.

So if you ask me stupid questions or try to cut me off or get all freaked out every time I say fuck or something, I'm out of here. You may need this shit, but I'm already rich as most of the countries on this miserable fucking planet, so fuck you. Got it?

No. Don't say anything. Just nod your fucking head and fucking sit there and keep your fucking mouth shut.

Hand me that bottle.

No, not that one. That's an _afternoon_ booze.

The Jager, you idiot.

Yeah, this is going to suck.

 **Two.**

So, okay, yeah.

Something I can tell you.

- _unintelligible mumbling-_

 _-unintelligible mumbling-_

Fuck!

- _unintelligible mumbling-_

Okay. So there was this one night before we recorded the last album.

We were in the kitchen, doing some band-bonding midnight snack kind of thing when Pickles walked in with a woman...

Wait. __

Turn it off.

Turn it off, I fucking said!

Don't make me punch you in the throat, you little rodent.

I said... __

 _(-Silence-)_

 **Three.**

Okay.

So that was totally a lie.

Not the woman with Pickles—that part is true. I mean, we weren't actually doing any kind of bonding since none of us really likes each other all that much. We just kind of all showed up at the same time because.

Just _because._

Anyway, Pickles had been out doing the kind of shit he does when he goes out, and he shows up back here with this woman, and there was just something about her.

She was older than our average sluts and groupies, but younger than Skwisgaar's GMILF freakshow. Maybe, like, around my age. She had all these tattoos and scars that I thought I'd seen somewhere before—like maybe I saw her in a skin mag or something. And the way that she was looking at each of us in turn, like she was trying to figure out exactly how to kill us where we sat, made her really smoking hot. And sort of familiar.

I thought maybe it was the way she smelled like booze, gun oil, and violence, because if a woman smells like she could be an ally during a zombie apocalypse, that gets me up every time. No shit.

Her legs were long and bare, but stockinged in tattoos as far as the eye could see, which was pretty far up her thighs; that didn't hurt either. Especially in those stiletto heels with these long spikes on the toes.

The more I looked, the more she looked _really_ familiar.

But whatever-I've boned at least a couple thousand women, sometimes by the baker's dozen, so go figure, right?

Right. And I do a lot of drugs and shit. So sue me for forgetting a girl's name.

Come on. He isn't going to sue me. He knows I'm kidding. You know I'm kidding—right? That's right, you little fuckstain.

So yeah. The woman. Right.

She was totally more interesting than the cold spinach pizza I was sharing with Toki, anyway.

Hey—I need another case of beer in here.

No. Now.

Look, you dick, I'm not fucking ar-...  
 _  
(-Silence-)_

 **Four.**

Okay.

So this woman.

She turned to Pickles right about then and said, in this low rough whiskey voice, "Pickles, dude; where's your shitter?"

Pickles gave her directions to the closest bathroom, and she strode off like a cheetah, you know? Hips rolling with long, no-fucking-around strides. Her long hair, black as my nail polish and her heavy eyeliner, fell to her ass like a wannabe-goth-chick's cloak.

I shit you not: for a potentially scary grown-up female person who kind of reminded me of someone, she was giving me a seriously brutal hard-on.

"Who the fuck _is_ that?" Murderface asked. He looked like he was both offended and super-aroused.

Come to think of it, only one of his hands was visible; the one holding the bayonet blade whose tip he was stabbing into the table top over and over and over again.

Now, we've known each other a long time, me and Murderface.

Long enough that I never, ever speculate about where Murderface's hand is or what it's doing, if it isn't in plain view.

Seriously, man. That's some good advice from me, Nathan Explosion, to you.

Pickles ignored him and fixed his eyes on me. He was smiling like, well, a real dildo; like I was supposed to be as excited as he seemed for some fucking lameass reason. I was mostly trying to place the woman's voice, because that was familiar too.

"Nathan—guess who I ran into at the bar?"

I frowned at him. Like I cared, you know?

But it was _Pickles,_ so I shrugged and played along, "A new meth dealer?"

He didn't say anything for a minute or so and then sort of shook his head. "Well, yeah. Actually I did. But dood—that ain't the thing!"

He was grinning like he'd been to the Nitrous Oxide Discount Mart on Blue Light Special Day, and he was kind of bouncing on his heels, he was so wired.

"That!" Pickles pointed in the direction the woman had gone in her quest for a crapper. _"Her!_ That lady right there is Annie Mosity!" I must have looked as blank as I felt because he rolled his eyes and dropped his arm. "Seriously, Nathan. Back in the day! Remember? "Gratuitous Violence?" Punk band? Opened for us on that coast-to-coast tour way back at the beginning of time? Your _girlfriend?_ "

And then I did remember. It all came down and beat the shit out of me like a bad flashback. I knew exactly who she was.

Because I'd spent the whole tour with that woman wrapped around my dick.

Annie Mosity is the most brutal woman I've ever known. She fucked like an angry honey badger on crank. No shit-Annie is the undefeated gladiator in the coliseum of blowjobs and rage-sex, in my experience, anyway. Probably the most violent person I know, too. Except, you know, me. And we _got_ each other.

Annie was a fantastic frontman in her own right, too. I liked her show a lot, and her songwriting was damn good. You know, for punk. Gratuitous Violence was a decent band for a while, probably because the other dudes in the group knew she'd stab them or something if they fucked off. No—really. Gratuitous Violence went through 3 rhythm guitarists, that tour. I'm serious.

So me and Annie, we were a thing for a while. Before, you know, we lost each other.

Until that night in the kitchen, I hadn't seen her since that tour bus pulled into home port. We were supposed to call each other... But nobody ever really means that shit, right?

I mean, it's, you know, just a thing people say. Right?

-What? I told you, shut the fuck up and let me talk!  
Look, you little motherfucker, I'm not kidding. I will hurt you.

I told you-no questions. __

 _(-Silence-)_

 **Five.  
** _-Throat clearing-  
_  
"I know, right? Trippy!" Pickles nodded so hard his dreads were whirling, and he was grinning huge. "I ran into her at some bar," he said again, "And since she and I've been in, like, seven rehabs together, we decided to celebrate and have our own reunion thingy. We closed up every place in the closest three towns, so I brought her back here for the night."

I looked around at everybody else. Because I just didn't know what to say.

Skwisgaar was looking at Pickles even though his fingers kept fretting. I can't even start to tell you how fucking creepy it is when he does that shit.

"You ams goings to fucks her, Pickle? Because if nots," He shrugged one of his shoulders, "I was takings the night off froms the groupies, but...-"

"Holy fucking hell, no!" Pickles shouted, cutting Skwisgaar off, his eyes wide with what sure enough looked like sheer terror. "Annie's fucked at least two dozen guys to death in the last five years, Skwisgaar. No fucking way I'm taking that chance-I ain't no fucking kid anymore!"

He stopped for breath, and added, "And you're not fucking her either, dood. We gotta start recording next week and all, and you won't play for shit with all the skin sucked off your dick, believe me! Or, you know, if you wake up dead."

Pickles looked around at all of us again. "Really guys. I just figured I was saving a cab driver's life, bringing her here. Seriously."

So of course Toki says, "I'd fucks her. Her inks ams pretty." He's a good kid, Toki, but he has no fucking idea what brutal unholy soul-devouring bitchmonsters women really are, yet. It wouldn't suck if he didn't find out for a while.

Annie returned right about then, like on cue, looking Toki up and down like tigress at a big-eyed lamb with three broken legs.

But after checking him out, she sort of drawled low, " Cherry, I'd break you just getting your pants off." Toki frowned and he opened his mouth like he was going to argue until she added, "Seriously. I have tracks older than you."

She didn't sound like she was being mean or anything; she sounded like she was just telling Toki the truth.

And the thing is, I knew she was.

Then she turned her head and looked at me, raised an eyebrow. "Right, Nate?"

She made me totally nervous looking into my eyes that way; parts of me remembered her a lot better than the rest of me when she did that. I forced myself to look over at Toki so I could stop looking at Annie. "She's not shitting you, Toki. A guy's gotta work up to someone like her _._ "

When I looked back, Annie bared her teeth.

With her it could be a warning or a smile—that I remembered really well.

Something stirred in the fight or flight part of my brain, but I couldn't exactly decide which way to go until she stalked across the kitchen towards where I was sitting with my hard-on and my cold pizza and some brand new apprehension.

Sure as shit, a few feet away, she made a flying scissors leap and came down straddling me on the chair, hooking her feet through the rungs of the fucking chairlegs so I couldn't dislodge her without breaking her ankles. Or the chair. Or stabbing the shit out of myself on her spiked shoes.

She ground her crotch against my boner and I could tell she wasn't wearing a damn thing under her skirt. But I didn't have a lot of time to think about it because she grabbed big handfuls of my hair and dragged my head back before I could fight her off.

And then she was kissing my mouth open with her tongue, and her teeth were in my bottom lip, and she was biting my neck, and she was whispering the most brutal dirty stuff in my ear, and I wasn't sure whether I wanted to hurt her enough to make her leave me the fuck alone or wait and see if this was going to end with a rough six-way animal bandfuck on the table.

What? No.

 _Fuck,_ no.

Because a Dethklok full-on bandfuck is something I've worked really hard to avoid. I mean, yeah-we've all taken on a pile of groupies with some back-up. That just can't be avoided in this business. But frankly, I don't want to deal with anyone's dick but mine during sex. Especially not four other dicks.

Especially not _those_ four other dicks.

 _Especially_ not with Annie Mosity.

Besides—that's all Eighties Cocaine and Spandex Hair-Band shit, and cliche as fuck.

So in the end I just gave up, let my head fall back, let my arms fall limp at my sides, let her ride the ridge in my pants, let her bite me, let her have my mouth, let her have _me_. And I won't lie—most of me was really fucking okay with it. It was a total improvement over sitting around trying to ignore the idiosyncrasies of my bandmates over shitty food and small talk.

And part of me was also remembering how the more I let her go at me without trying to stop her, the more Annie owed me bigtime for it, and I was pretty sure she'd make good on it as soon as I could get her alone someplace. Anyplace.

Because some things are forever.

When she finally raised her head and one long leg to climb back off me, my balls felt like eggplants.

What? Eggplants.

Great big shiny purple things. My balls felt big and purple. Like eggplants.

They're vegetables.

No, not my balls you fucking moron—eggplants.

You're shitting me, right?

Right?

You don't know what an eggplant is?

Baba ganoush, for fuckssakes!

That's it, I'm done. Turn that fucking thing off.

No. Right fucking now.

Or I will kick you in the throat with my steel-toed boot.

Right. Fucking. N...

 _(-Silence-)_

 **Six.  
** You're an irritating little fucker.

And I don't like you.

Like, really. A lot.

Just wanted you to know.

Anyway, Toki was staring at me and Annie with his eyes huge and his mouth open. Skwisgaar was watching us so close his fingers had actually stopped moving. Murderface looked like he was going to cry. Or blow a load right there at the table. You know? That pretty much sums up Murderface in general, if you think about it. I just thought of that.

Anyway, Pickles, that rat bastard and my oldest real friend, was laughing his ass off. But aside from Pickles, it was so incredibly quiet in that kitchen I could almost hear the blood pounding in my seriously confused, angry dick.

Toki finally broke the silence. "Wowies." Poor kid looked traumatized.

There was a wet spot on the front of my jeans. Didn't know if it came from me or her, but it didn't matter because I was really glad to see her and done fucking around.

Enough foreplay.

 **Seven.**

So I stood up, picked Annie up, and threw her over my shoulder; I waited a couple seconds to see what happened next. When she didn't bite off a chunk of my shoulder or try to remove my liver with her spike-toed shoes or pull a blade and stab me in the back, I knew she didn't object.

"Hey, Annie. Long time, no see," I said over my shoulder at her, you know, to be polite, and started out of the kitchen. "You're looking good."

We stopped long enough that she could lean out over my back and french Pickles goodnight as we passed him. He called after us as we hit the hallway, "For the love of all that's unholy, Nathan—be careful! BE CAREFUL! DON'T! DIE!"

When we'd rounded a corner down the hallway towards my wing of the place, I set her down, shoved her up against the wall, held her there with one hand on her neck; I remembered how it always got her off. When I stuck my other hand under that little skirt, she was already so wet her thighs were damp. Some things never change.

"How long's it been, Annie?" I asked, playing her with my fingers.

Her voice was breathy but just as cigarettes-and-whiskey as I remembered it. "'Bout ten years, Nate."

"So what you been up to?" I asked her.

Her head fall back against the wall and I heard her breathing go shaky, that quick. The years fell away and we could have been doing this same exact thing in a shitty little tourbus crapper or a stairwell in some nameless podunk venue. It was literally muscle memory.

"After the band broke up," she gasped, arching hard into my hand. "Me and Rickie started a new band—'Shithead.' Rickie...dead... speedball...Oh, fuck... Nate..." Her breathing was starting to come apart now and she was shaking like she was dopesick. When her words trailed off I knew she was almost there.

So I stopped what I was doing and hoisted her back over my shoulder.

Because, you know: Payback's a bitch.

But so is Annie, and damned if she didn't bite my asscheek, right through the denim of my jeans. Really fucking hard. The nostalgia alone almost got me off right there.

 **Eight.**  
I was thinking I wasn't going to make it a lot farther before one of us ended up bleeding or I blew my wad in self-defense right in my jeans or both, so when we passed the living room on the way to my place, I stuck my head in there to see if any of the guys were around.

They weren't and I knew this wouldn't take long, so I carried Annie to the couch and tossed her facedown over the closest arm. She laughed and said something about Old Times even before I shoved her face against the couch cushion.

I took out my dick, hard and heavy as a piece of stone by now, and shoved her skirt up over her ass.

It was still a pretty nice ass, covered in tattooed words and phrases like graffiti, so after I found her hot, slippery front entrance and slid in, I stood there and took a moment to read some of the new quotes.

There was a passage from Moliere tattooed in the curve of her right cheek, but while I was translating the French she kept shoving her hips back at me, making those little noises women make when they want something more than a still dick in them. It was distracting. So just for old time's sake I pulled almost all the way out of her until she squirmed and called me every kind of asshole I've ever heard and then some.

It really was like old times.

I waited a while longer just to remind her which one of us was standing here with a rockhard boner and which one was upended over a sofa with her ass in the air, and then I drove the point home. And since I really just wanted to get us to my place where we'd have a lot more privacy, time, and options, I ploughed her as hard and fast as she could shove herself back at me.

We were both past ready so it didn't take much at all until we were both swearing at each other through our gritted teeth, coming hard and fast as a train wreck. You know, after all the years, I didn't think anything could ever feel that good again.

I put myself back into my jeans, pulled her skirt back down over the fraction of her ass it covered, and threw her back over my shoulder. "Nice to see you again, Annie," I told her.

And you know? I really meant it.

"Fuck you, Nate," she snarled back and that made me smile.

See? Just like old times.

 **Nine.**  
When we finally got to my wing and my rooms, we locked the door. It was like we shared the same mind again, knowing there was liable to be screaming soon, and of the kind nobody not directly involved needed to investigate.

What can I say without sounding like a porn commentator? Well, I was really glad I'd strated working out again.

Because Annie and I fucked each other up against, bent over, or on top of, every single vertical and horizontal surface in my bedroom. I mean, the walls, the entertainment center, the dressers, the mirrors... A lot of things got broken. Good times, man.

We ended up in my bed eventually, and with the assistance of some A-Grade pharmaceuticals we about fucked ourselves to death there, too, doing things we're too old to be even thinking we could do anymore.

Finally we had to take a breather. While we caught our breath, Annie finished off the bottle of Laphroaig she was working on, and fucked herself with the neck of the bottle, slow and lazy. And it was so dirty-hot I ended up hard again anyway.

It hit me then, as I jerked myself off watching her twist and grind and come over and over again, I really had missed Annie. And I think I missed the person I was when we had been together.

I just didn't know it until now.

Hey-you can take that part out, right?

No, dickbag. The me missing her part.

What the fuck? What did you think I meant?

God, you're an idiot.

 **Ten.**  
"So, what have you been up to?" We were sitting up against the headboard, passing a bong back and forth, waiting for whatever those white tabs we found bagged up in my underwear drawer were to kick in.

Annie finally exhaled, and I laughed. She could still clear a hit like nobody else. "Bucket List stuff, mostly." She handed me the bong.

"Still?" I managed to squeak out while inhaling.

She elbowed me in the ribs—but not so hard I blew my hit. "Fuck off—we're all dying. All the time. Besides. A girl's gotta have hobbies, Nate." She just sat there for a few minutes, looking at me. Then she said, "Like, I finally got to fuck Lemmy again."

I snorted so hard I started to cough and could hardly get out, "Isn't he, like, a hundred and forty years old now? Yeah. Like _that's_ an accomplishment!" And then, "FUCK! Hey!" when she reached over and grabbed my balls, squeezed them just hard enough to let me know how much she could hurt me if she wanted to.

"Show some respect, Nate," she growled at me like one of the yard wolves. "Lemmy is God. Sixty-some years old and he fucked me for three days straight. Couldn't cross my legs for two weeks, after. _And_ taught me about reconstruction in Postwar Germany while he did it."

Annie stared at something I couldn't see for a moment, and then she smiled. "You know, I still taste his dick in my mouth every time I hear _Love Me Like A Reptile."_

I had a feeling right then, and I think maybe it was jealousy.

Because I wondered for a second if she ever talked to some other guy she was balling about me, Nathan Explosion, like that. And if that look crossed her face if she did.

It was brutal, you know?

So, yeah. I stepped right on that feeling's neck and broke it. __

_(-Silence-)_

 **Eleven.**

So I laughed. "Yeah, yeah, big fucking deal. You and I fucked each other sore for a whole North American tour." I may or may not have sounded like a petulant unmetal jealous teenage boyfriend, but she was probably too fucked up to notice.

She smiled at me and took the bong back; as she drew a long hit, held it, I could hear a door slam in a hall someplace far away from this one, and then a toilet flush. The weird shit you remember, you know?

Anyway, Annie finally exhaled. "Forty-seven states, and most of Canada, babe. We were good, weren't we?"

She handed the bong off to me and reached for my dick, wrapped her fingers around it, squeezing just tight enough to make my whole world narrow down to the way her thumb alternated between rubbing the root and lightly tracing the rim of its head. I took a deep hit, felt the smoke expand in my lungs, and closed my eyes, riding the bodyrush. My head fell back against the headboard, and I focused with all the strength of the best dusted dope blood or money could buy on that piece of my body Annie Mosity was jacking off with a degree of creativity and skill that remains unparalleled in my experience.

Behind my eyelids, I imagined I was watching my dick getting bigger, harder, the better it felt in Annie's hand, and I grinned, making a mental note to find out where Pickles got this weed so I could invest. "What else did you do?" Because some dirty road stories right about now would make the experience my dick and I were having even better.

Annie's laugh was low and dirty; it was like her laugh wrapped around my dick too, warm, rough, tight. "Well, I totally corrupted another boy-band."

"Really? How many is that, now?"

"Number eleven. One suicide attempt, three dudes in rehab, and a shit-ton of therapy going on. Whole thing imploded. In a week, dude. Right before the Grammys."

I whistled. "That's got to be a personal best for you."

"Yeah, it's like magic, the way a straightedge promise-ring hetero-Christian manboy loses his shit when he finally gets so fucked up he lets another guy suck him off and likes it. Sometimes I think it's my sacred destiny to facilitate that rite of passage. You'd think they'd learn eventually, wouldn't you, Nate? I mean, _eleven times._ It's not like I hide what I'm about. What the fuck?" She laughed again, but then she sighed.

Annie Mosity. She _sighed._

I still can't remember if I'd ever heard her do that before. But I don't think so.

"Everyone's wrapped so fucking tight these days," she went on, "Not like us, Nate. Not like back then. We were fucking alchemists back then, turning everything that felt good into philosopher's stones and making solid gold out of the world's hate for us."

"That's why..." And then I temporarily lost my ability to make words because Annie was using both hands now, and she'd spit on them so her saliva made her fingers glide up and down and around in a way that made my eyes roll back in my head. "Fuck, Annie." I took a deep breath, and tried again, "That's why so many of us are dead. Chasing what feels good."

She looked at me with a raised eyebrow for a few minutes. "Wow. Yeah. You're probably right. Gosh, I don't want to put you in any danger, Nathan."

I knew what she was doing, but it was too late. Her hands fell away from me. Just like that.

She watched me squirm and pant, her eyes big and wide and all doelike, until I knew I wasn't going to be able to wait her out. Not this time. I totally caved, groaning, "Okay—point taken. Goddamnit, Annie, you hellbitch, you're killing me here."

That quick she bent over me to whisper in my ear, "Oh, no; not yet, Nate." She bit my earlobe and chuckled, and then her mouth and both her hands were full of my dick, and I fell straight back ten years into this flawless set of skills she'd assembled just for me, into the raw profound ecstasy we perfected for each other with such desperate constant practice all those months, way back at the fucking dawn of time.

Me and Annie, warrior queen of blowjobs and rage-sex.

And I remembered everything. All of it.

It really was alchemy.

No one's ever known me the same way since. I don't know for sure whether I'm really fucking lucky for that, or if I'm damned.

I came in her mouth about ten seconds later and I already missed her.

 _(-Silence-)_  
 _(-Silence-)_  
 _(-Silence-)_

 **Twelve.**  
When my eyes focused and I could breathe again, she was back to leaning against the headboard next to me. I lit a couple cigarettes and handed her one. "Damn. I forgot how good we were. You have a most amazing memory, Ms. Mosity."

And then Annie shot me in the heart.

Or as close as an old lover can come to it without an actual firearm, anyway.

She gave me a sidelong glance, blew a perfect smoke ring, and said, "Oh, I _never_ forgot you, Mr. Explosion. I never will."

The thing is, I heard everything she wasn't saying. And there was nothing I could say back.

Nothing that was safe.

Nothing that wouldn't end in smoking craters and massive collateral damage.

Nothing that we could ever come back from.

So I reached for one of the bottles on my bedside bar. It was a fresh liter of Stoli and I cracked the seal, slammed half of it, and then handed it Annie, saying, "To alchemy."

Because I knew she'd get it.

And she did.

I saw it when she smiled at me.

Then she drank down the rest, saluted me with the empty, and answered, "To pure gold, Nate."

And I got it.

I smiled back.

 _(-Silence-)_  
 _(-Silence-)_  
 _(-Silence-)_

 **Thirteen.**  
No, you asshat.

We didn't snuggle and go to sleep on opposite sides of the bed listening to that stupid fucking Breakfast Club song until morning or some fucking thing. God, if we did, we'd have to kill each other afterwards. What kind of freak are you?

Don't laugh, fuckface. I'm still deciding whether I'm going to kick you to death or not when we're through.

Yeah. Not so funny now, is it? __

 _(-Silence-)_  
 _(-Silence-)_

 _(-Silence-)_

 **Fourteen.**

We continued to get shitfaced and fuck until we passed out because it was me and Annie and that's what we're good at.

And it was fucking glorious, I shit you not. Some pharmaceutical-grade crank and a second wind, that's when all the kinks come back. All that stuff you try to forget _really_ gets you off when you aren't with a person who isn't scared.

Like when a woman I'm fucking pulls my hair. That gets me off like you wouldn't believe. The aggression. The way it hurts. The vacation from being in control of every goddamn detail... It's brutal. But no girl dares to do that to me anymore. Like they're afraid I'll be pissed. Hurt them. Make them disappear. Or worse, cast them out of my presence. Leave them to fight with the other guys' castoffs for some attention from Murderface.

Or like how much I miss kissing a woman who isn't afraid of me—my life, my fame, my music, my reputation, my anger, my dick. A woman who can go mouth to mouth with me hard for hard, up against the wall, with tongues and teeth and all of my fucking red-zone existential pain gone off the rails until we taste blood.

Yeah. Another alchemist, I guess.

It's probably good there aren't any, any more. Except Annie. Because it's scares the hell out of me how easily that woman could totally own me.

Why?

Because it's brutal, someone knowing you that well.

Because, no matter what-if you do it right, whether you use it for or against each other, it's going to hurt.

Well, yeah-sexually.

Dude. What did you think I was talking about?

 **Fifteen.**

Annie left the next morning.

I didn't wake up, and she didn't try to make me. We didn't have anything else safe enough to say out loud, I guess. And really, it would have been stupid to try to have any conversation about anything as fucked up as we still were.

Pickles came and got her, though. He was happy to see we were both still alive—or at least that's what he says. I believe him. He's, well, he's my friend. But if you tell him I said so, I'll kill you.

He says he was even happier still when Annie climbed him like a lumberjack and dry-humped his morning wood until he blew his load while she kissed him goodbye.

And apparently on the way to the door, where some gears were waiting to take her to the airfield, they passed Toki and Skwisgaar. Pickles swears on his vintage Motorhead vinyls that Annie winked at them both, ran her fingers down the front of Toki's Pokemon t-shirt and said, "Next time, Cherry." And then she looked at Skwisgaar and said, "You too, Celeborn. Odds are good I won't break you both at the same time."

But those two won't talk about it; Pickles and I are pretty sure she scared them that bad.

Or that they're totally gay for each other.

Or both.

And with that, I guess, she's gone.

 **Sixteen.  
** That's it.

What do you mean, that can't be it. I'm _telling_ you, that's fucking it.

No, we won't keep in touch. Are you insane?

Why? What—were you asleep this whole time?

 _Why?_ For, you know, a lot of reasons!

Well, because we didn't the last time, did we, smartass?

And because I'm on my seventh liver transplant, and Annie survived fucking God. _Twice._

And because when we're together, we're best at things that kill people.

I mean, seriously. I had bruises and scratches and teethmarks on my arms and legs and back and shoulders and ass for weeks after Annie left. I bet you thought at the beginning of this story Pickles was just giving Skwisgaar shit—but my dick was literally chapped raw. Do you have any idea how much it sucks to record and mix an entire album standing up the whole time, with no pants on? With no part of you that doesn't hurt when a groupie touches it?

Of course not, you assclown. It was a rhetorical question. But seriously-I totally did most of the vocals with an icepack on my nuts, and dipping my dick in aloe gel every fifteen minutes.

Yeah, whatever. Fuck you.

Now shut up and get me some tequila.

 **Seventeen.**

Do I have any last things I want to say?

Okay, sure.

Do all the drugs, drink all the booze, fuck as much as you can, and die: Alchemy forever.

Oh—and buy our albums.

No. I said _tequila._

Fuck Pickles! He doesn't want me to have any tequila because he's a dick.

No—seriously. He's just saying that.

Don't fucking make me kick your ass-

 _(-Silence-)_  
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 _(-Silence-)_

 _(-Silence-)_

 **Eighteen.**  
 _Finis_


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